The White House Conference on Aging (1971) has recently focused much attention on the nutritional needs of the elderly, citing impairment of taste and smell as one of the major factors leading to inadequate diet. However, there is no substantial data on how food tastes to an older person. The proposed research is aimed at investigating the sensory qualities of gustation and olfaction and olfaction especially as they change during the aging process. Food substances (meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, etc.) will be ordered by multidimensional scaling procedures on the basis of their tastes and smells. It is virtually impossible to order most food substances (e.g. roast beef) by phenomenological means into the traditional gustatory categories of sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Three groups of subjects will be used in these experiments: pre-adolescent, adult, and elderly. At the very least, the methodology of multidimensional scaling, as applied here, will yield multidimensional spaces which illustrate meaningful relationships and distances among food stimuli revealing how these relationships change with age. It will also deepen our understanding of both the psychological and physical dimensions underlying the experience of taste and smell.